by Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY

by Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY

When Katy Perry's sugary Roar video pops up on your mobile device, the lyrics are literally eye-popping as text-message emoticons and vibrant neon colors flank the words dancing across the screen.

Roar has amassed more than 31 million views in just three weeks and is an example of the latest trend of lyric videos that incorporate punchy graphics and explosive fonts to present fans with the words to their favorite songs.

Record labels are jumping into the genre: They're releasing elaborate lyric videos to hit songs from Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez and other artists weeks before debuting "official" music videos. Looking at the numbers, it's easy to see why.

This year alone, people have watched lyric videos more than 665 million times on YouTube and uploaded twice as many hours of content tagged "lyric video" as they did last year, says the site's head of culture and trends, Kevin Allocca. And while Roar's numbers continue to climb, Perry still has a ways to go before catching up with Maroon 5, whose popular Payphone lyric video holds a genre record with more than 109 million views (trailing the single's live-action clip, sitting at 116 million).

"They've become so popular that it's not even a question if we're going to make one or not," says Trevor Kelley, head of global digital marketing at Disney Music Group. "It's something that the kids in these fan bases are making on their own or seeking out fairly regularly, so if you don't make them, a fan is going to."

Early examples of lyric videos include Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues clip in 1967 and George Michael's Praying for Time in 1990. But it wasn't until Cee Lo Green'sForget You clip in 2010 that the genre exploded, as fans feverishly passed the single's vibrant lyric video along on social media.

"They're the kind of video that really just evolves from behavior and activity on the Web and on YouTube," Allocca says. "One of the great things about the lyric video is that it allows you to be interactive around the song and allows us to watch these songs, share these songs, and have a discussion around these songs in a really simple way."

Not only do official lyric videos build buzz for a single by generating conversation among fans (as John Mayer's prancercise-themed Paper Dolldid earlier this summer), they also help establish an artist's brand and generate revenue for record labels, says Billboard deputy editor Yinka Adegoke. But with the growing popularity comes higher expectations, larger production values and heftier price tags.

"We've had lyric videos shot that might as well have been a small music video," Kelley says. "There's a cast there, (food) service, multi-cameras, and it's a lyric video! It's because the popularity has increased so much and it's gotten competitive."

In a sense, lyric videos are becoming the "new" music video: Families no longer sit around their TVs to watch the most buzzed-about clips on MTV as they might have done 20 years ago, Werde says. Instead, lyric videos are designed for the new platforms on which audiences view content.

"Realistically, you put hundreds of thousands of dollars into creating a music video and largely, the majority of viewers are going to be watching it on 7-inch screens on their iPhones and Android devices, their iPads and PCs," Adegoke says. "Music videos then move away from being this kind of big event and are more about listening to the music on YouTube."

And while flashy lyric videos are hot at the moment, social video apps such as Vine and Instagram are further redefining how popular artists connect and share music with fans.

Lyric videos are "one of the new creative formats that's very much born of social video and YouTube," Allocca says. "We'll definitely continue to see interesting takes on how to do a lyric video, but I think the really interesting thing is, what's the next cool, interactive thing that these artists are going to use video to express themselves with?"